Saturday, August 18, 2012

Family Growth Chart

In my first child hood house my parents kept our growth chart on the wall by the fridge.
In my second childhood house the growth chart marked up on the inside the linen closet door.

I loved seeing all of our markings over the years- now that we are pretty much as tall as were going to get the grand kids are the ones adding their height to the charts.
If ever my parents were to move they would either loose the memories or would have to write them down on paper...

I wanted something that I would be able to take with us when we move so a growth chart project has been on my list for the past year. I wanted to start it before Xelly was to tall and I missed some markings.

I went to Home Depot and got a slice of pine wood. 8ftx10in wide and cut it down to I believe 7 feet.

I had some stain left over from Quinton's scrabble letters so I used it on this project as well. I rubbed in on pretty thick and let it sit for 30 seconds- 1 minute depending on how dark I wanted the area.

Then I got the measuring tape out and marked each foot with a pen and with a permanent marker I drew a 4in line
I did the same thing with each inch
1in- 3/4in line
2in-3/4 in line
3in- 1 1/2 in line
4in- 3/4 in line and so on. Basically the same way a ruler looks.

After all the markings were on it I headed to Michael's to get something for the letters. I had originally planned on using my exacto knife to cut out letters I printed off but I cant find my knife. So plan B lead me to Michael's for a stencil and I left with Vinyl lettering.

The problem I found was all the sayings I wanted to use were to large for the space I had so I changed my saying and went with the homemade look--- letters uneven and kinda messy. But I love
it!

Now I can start recording Xellys height and keep this memory no matter where we go over the years (cross my fingers back to AZ!!)